At Klosterstraße 75, the “Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstraße” existed from 1933 to 1945 with about 40 studios, which had come into being through personal initiative.
As early as January 24, 1919, Käthe Kollwitz became the first woman to be appointed as a full member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and received a professorial title; in 1928 she was also given a master studio for graphic art at Hardenbergstrasse 33. When the Nazis took power in 1933, she lost her professorship. She would have had to give up her studio space anyway for reasons of age. After working again in Weißenburger Strasse in the meantime, she managed to rent a studio space in the former Royal Art School at Klosterstraße 75 from 1934 to 1940.
The mostly younger artists had a certain artistic freedom here, even though renting a studio was only possible with permission from the Ministry of Culture. Kollwitz spent most of his time there working on the sculpture “Mother with Two Children”.
Soon after her husband’s death in 1940, she gave up the studio; she was 73 years old. In a letter she wrote:
“I live on the edge of life like this. I have given up my studio in Klosterstraße since the fall and moved it back to my apartment. This is appropriate to my present condition. Because I’ m very stripped back with my strength, I could only go to the studio here and there.”
The building Klosterstraße 75 was bombed in February 1945. The ruins of the monastery church still stand on the busy Grunerstrasse at Alexanderplatz. Right next to it, which today would be in the middle of Grunerstrasse, stood the art school.
